According to a Project Information Literacy study, it would seem that books are on the side. From “Booting Down” (Inside Higher Ed):
a University of Washington study, “Balancing Act: How College Students Manage Technology While in the Library during Crunch Time” … reveals that students are taking to the library as a place of refuge—and their laptops and cell phones aren’t necessarily the pesky distractions some assume them to be … students are using the library less for its traditional resources—books, journals, etc.—and more as a place to get away from the hectic world around them.
While most of us would agree that library collections are for something and that use is a central function of a library, can we really say that collections are not—from an investment and infrastructural point of view, from the perspective of the library as a work of and for time—at the center of libraries?
I’ve published a defense of my library collection here (The Curator).
